Do you ever try to
tell one of your non-librarian friends about the youth media awards? While you get all excited about the winners
and start gabbing about this award and that one like it's the Academy Awards, your friend naively asks,
"there's that many awards for kid's books?" Sadly, not everyone knows the awesomeness of the Youth Media Awards.
Well if you haven't
had a chance yet to obsess over the winners and honors, check out the various
divisions of ALA that sponsor each award.
The YALSA book awards include the Alex, Edwards, Morris, Nonfiction,
Odyssey, Printz, while the ALSC covers the awards for the Newbery, Caldecott,
Arbuthnot Lecture, Batchelder, Pura Belpre, Carnegie, Geisel, Odyssey, and
Laura Ingalls Wilder. For a
comprehensive look, check out the alphabetical list of all ALA awards.
If your favorite
book didn't make the cut, it may not be because members of the committee didn't also love
it. Although we all have our favorites,
committee members are charged with following the criteria for their award. Also the voting process can be complicated,
as we learned during the mock Printz this year.
For more about the Newbery process, check out Monica Edinger's post on Nerdy Book Club, Top Ten Things You May Not Know About the Newbery Award. Feel free to send some love to your favorite that did or didn't win big in the comments (I still love you Ask the Passengers!)
In addition to the
awards announced at ALA, the best of the year is recognized in a variety of
lists, such as the Great Graphic Novels for Teens, Best Fiction for Young
Adults, Amazing Audiobooks, Fabulous Films for Young Adults, Popular
Paperbacks, Quick Picks, Reader's Choice and Teens' Top Ten.
Want a fast way to
access all these lists when you are out and about? Check out the Teen Book Finder App on the App
Store.
A big thank you must
go out to all the committee members that work so hard all year so we librarians
(and kids too!) can reap the benefits of your efforts.
I was so bummed that Ask the Passengers ended up with nothing. Currently I'm struggling through Code Name Verity and the first person narrative is just not working for me so I was glad to see that the mock Printz group loved AtP, too. It was interesting that in our own Mock Printz group here at school we had six of the 10 books that HVLA Mock Print was considering but the only one from the real Mock Printz we chose was Code Name Verity. I do have to say we don't really follow the rules of the actual Printz Committee, so that is probably why :-)
ReplyDeleteCaroline Bartels
Horace Mann Katz Library